yeah, I don't know why they wouldn't put those characters in the game when/if they are already "made". There were at least 3 other forms of enemy in the beta (not including the dog thing). I guess we will never know. >

I think they've been removed from the game a long time ago. I also tried to take a look at the hood thing and found numerous times where in the code it is stated "no_hood_ever". They probably completely deleted the code concerning the hoods, so it won't be possible to get it back.

"no_hood_ever"? I guess they are determined not to include that in. And as you mentioned earlier this year, I also saw that screenshot where a NPC shot himself with the shootgun. Thing like that should probably left in as they already have that with the MP5 and the handgun.

Yes, I got the answer to that too : in the code, they designed two situations "suicide with a one-hand weapon" and "suicide with a two hands weapon", each of this situation calling for a specific animation and asking for the "proper" weapon : pistol for one handed and MP5 for two-handed. I guess they realized later that using the suicide animation with the shotgun would need them to add new bits of code, so they decided to let it out, though the animation does exist. There was also another way of suicide, which was to explode a barrel near the NPC, but I don't know if they kept that in in the final game. For it to happen, you must have a NPC freaking out, that he has a weapon and a destroyable entity (like an explosive barrel) near. There was obviously no plan to create an animation for the compact flamethrower and flamethrower, though.

I see. I wonder if time constraint had a lot to do with all that missing stuff. With the freaked out NPC near the exposive barrel, I wonder if they might shot it by mistake when they start shooting erratically. But then again, I can't recall a place in a level, when the npc might freakout and there are exposive barrels nearby. And as discussed earlier, do you know which level where I might be able to produce a suicide with the live wire?, I tried with the stratmed lab level, but was unsuccessful. The freaked out NPC must be right next to the wire? Sometimes, they started doing that"dance" and ended up scuttled away from the horrific scene and remain calm after that. Other times, they just died of a heart attack.

I had the occasion to see it on the stratalab level, yes. Trap the 4-legged walker in the room where you start, then get Falchek, give him ammos, then take him near the body and the live wire. Take the gun and ammo back and let him near the corpse. If he flees too far away from it, try getting him back to it. You can also try it in the room where there are two bodies, the one between Dixon and you. Let Falchek kill the scuttlers, then close the doors, take his weapon and wait until he freaks out. As there are two bodies in this room and a wire nearby, there is a good chance for him to commit suicide with the wire. Keep trying and it should happen. :wink:

Well, I think I've just solved the "freakout dance" bug problem. It was something in the NPC's AI, a function before another one which seemed to cause it. Cool ! :D However, there is something I regret in the version I'm working on : the game is not optimized, so it is sometimes laggy. So we'll have the choice between a laggy game with less bugs and tweaked AI or the normal, fluid game with the bugs... Too bad. :?

I finally saw the live wire suicide scene. Falchek kept dancing away from the body and then he was calm. I got frustated and was firing the compact flame thrower in the thin air. Falchek got burned and at first he stayed away from me, but then he walked toward me (trying to grab a weapon from me, assumbly), so I start frying him, he then back off closer to the body and freaked out, couched down, and after 1 minutes or so, he calmly stood up and electrocuted himself. It's great that you got rid of that dance problem, it was really annoying. I would still pick the laggy game with tweaked AI and lessbugs. Is the game only laggy when there are a lot of characters together?

Just tried 30 times to make the bug happen and it didn't... Now I start a game to check something else and the bug happens right away. :roll: So, it is not solved for the moment... But I have hope. :wink:

I've been reading this thread over time. Very, very cool. Based on what I'd heard about the game before, it didn't interest me. But I'm interested now... Go Garee...go Garee...

Seems like the laggy thing is not that pronounced if I use the level files from the retail version of the game. Thanks for the support, guys. :wink:

Hello guys, a little post to tell you about the progress on the mod : - I started reworking the infected NPC Ai so that they really burst-out when the situation is good for them. I won't give too much info about this as I think it will be better if some mystery remains on the way the Things operates, but let's say now that the Thing won't hesitate to burst-out if the situation seems in their favor. With the original engine, you could have 3 Things in disguise and one human and the Things would still not burst-out which was kind of stupid. I'm also trying to implement the fact that the burst-out depends of who has a weapon and who hasn't. This way, giving a weapon to a NPC you've just met could be a bad idea as the guy could just burst out in the next room and destroy your precious weapon and then attack you. - Another thing I'm working on is the fact that the "infected" state does not go from one level to another. This means that you can have a NPC who has been infected during a level and is magically "cured" and not a Thing anymore in the next level. So you guess I'd like very much to change that. :wink: Anyway, as soon as these things will work, I'll start working on the "classic version" of the mod. As said earlier, this version of the mod will stick to the original story and will just get rid of the scripted burst-outs, deaths and will allow the NPCs to go from one level to another one.

Some of the things I've changed : - made the Things "non-pushable" so that the player cannot just push them back anymore if surrounded. - Increased the damage of the burst-outs. - Reduced the burst-out time when exposed by a blood--*test*-('") : before, it was possible to unmask a Thing and quickly go in the NPC screen to take its weapon and ammo back before it bursted out. It's not possible anymore. This is why the player will be wise to take his weapon away from a NPC he is about to -*test*-('") before using the syringe. - Added the fact that scuttlers appear when a burst-out dies (after all, I don't see why burst-outs don't produce scuttlers... Norris' head did detach from his body, didn't it ? :wink: ). - Removed the fact that NPCs with 100% trust trust the player no matter what : they will lose trust now even if at 100% (this avoids the situation where you kill a human NPC in front of them and they don't react). - On the other hand, added the fact that a NPC helps the player against an hostile NPC if he has 60% trust or more. - Reduced the trust loss when a NPC is coerced : this way, the player can force a NPC to follow him and slowly win his trust by killing Things in front of him, healing him and so on. The player can now coerce a NPC about 3 times before he gets in red state and the coercion time is longer. - Increased the damage and radius of most grenades. - Increased a little the damage of the flamethrower and blowtorch and increased a little the range of the blowtorch. After all, it is "The Thing" and it makes sense that these weapons are particularly effective in this game. :) Don't worry though, a shotgun or a MP5 is still useful to bring the Things' health down. Ideally, a NPC armed with a blowtorch and another one with a MP5 will be able to take on most Things they encounter. I've changed a lot of other stuff but don't remember it right now... I'm waiting for a friend to fix the "infection through levels" stuff and I'll probably start to work on the levels themselves. There also are some issues on this version due to the fact that I'm using an older version of the engine : for instance, the cutrscenes cannot be skipped which can get irritating pretty quick. I'm still trying to find a solution on other problems like the freakout dance. There also are some display bugs (blake's weapon appearing and disappearing notably in fps view) but it is only a minor bug. I'll try to fix it if I find at some point how to do it, of course. By the way, if you've noticed some things not right in the game, please point them to me so i can try to fix them. I plan to correct some of them (like the disappearing scuttlers glitch) but I won't be able to fix others (like the fact that sometimes an explosion hits you or a NPC through a wall... Mmm maybe I should reduce the radius of grenades, after all). Voilà ! :wink:

Thanks for the updates, Gary.

Again some new stuff : I was able to change the number of NPCs buttons in the NPCselect screen ! So, you won't be stuck anymore with only 4 NPCs to whom you can give orders while you have 5 or 6. How cool is that ? :D On the other hand, I wonder how many NPCs buttons I should choose : I went with 8 at the beginning but the buttons with the NPCs faces are kind of tiny. I then changed this to 6 but if there are more NPCs, it could be annoying to not be able to give order to the NPCs who are not in the NPC select ring. What do you guys think ? Anyway, I had several big battles with 6 or 7 NPCs involved and everything seemed to work fine. As I told you earlier, the dynamic now will be that you have to give weapons to the right NPCs in order to survive, as the Things in disguise will attack only if they judge that they have enough chance of winning the fight. Moreover, they destroy the weapons they were holding as a human when they burst-out, so better think twice before giving a NPC who could be a Thing your flamethrower. :wink: Another thing : I noticed that the NPCs could autoheal themselves if they have a medipack in their inventory, but it seems that it sometimes makes the game crash. I'll have to see if this can work or not. I've also noticed several animations which were not used, notably "conversational gestures" animations and I'll try to see if I can get them back in the game (some of these animations are unfinished but others seem fine to me). Another question : would you guys like that I keep the identity of the ones infected the same way it was in the original game or do you want me to change it ? I could also offer several versions of the levels to change who is infected and who isn't.